Development of an Aeroservoelastic Platform

Abstract

With the increased focus on sustainability, aircraft are designed to reduce their emissions. One way to accomplish this is by increasing the wing aspect ratio, thereby increasing the aerodynamic efficiency, however this is not without consequences. Increased aspect ratio wings have a higher structural mass, are more susceptible to gust and maneuver loads and generally flutter at lower velocities. Due to the advent of both passive and active control techniques these issues can fortunately be solved by using gust load allevation (GLA), maneuver load alleviation (MLA) and flutter suppression.
Current aeroelastic testing facilities at Delft University of Technology include a gust generator and aeroelastic apparatus, used to suspend a passive wing section in the wind tunnel. The need for ad¬ ditional research on aeroelastic control in order to improve the sustainability and safety of aviation necessitates the development of a new wing section with aileron and spoiler control surfaces that is compatible with current facilities. The development, manufacturing and initial characterization and test¬ ing of this wing section is the subject of the present work.
As the new wing section includes a spoiler, a literature review is performed on this subject. Spoilers function by deflecting into the flow, causing separation aft of the spoiler and creating a large turbulent wake, resulting in a drastic decrease of lift. A linear potential flow model for spoiler aerodynamics developed by Brown and Parkinson was implemented in MATLAB with the intent of implementing this in future aeroelastic models. Verification of this model showed good agreements with original data presented in the paper describing the model.
The passive wing section was chosen as a basis for the new design. The position and size of the control surfaces are determined based on a review of experimental and operational applications. The new wing section was designed, resulting in a self¬contained model, including a single¬board computer, sensors and power supply. Actuation mechanisms were developed for the control surfaces, with a parametric device for control surface free play included in the aileron actuation mechanism. The new wing section was manufactured successfully and control software was implemented using Simulink.
A series of tests were performed to characterize the dynamic behavior of the wing section. Due to a combination of higher inertia and kinematics of the actuation mechanism, the usable bandwidth of the aileron is shown to be lower than that of the spoiler. Aerodynamic results show that the combined use of aileron and spoiler result in a reduction or reversal of the aerodynamic response of the wing. Gust load alleviation results with proportional control show an increase in damping by 1300% and a reduction in peak amplitude of 50% when using the spoiler. Results for the aileron are notice¬ ably less, with a decrease in amplitude of 15% and an increase of damping of 145%. The differences are attributed to both the differences in kinematics of the mechanisms as well as the greater absolute change in lift coefficient obtainable by the spoiler.